I'm hoping the script calls for Ingrid's older sister (me, natch) to visit Sicily and that she and Ingrid receive an invitation from Salvo to have dinner on the terrazzina of Salvo's house at Marinella (as it appears in the TV show) on a beautiful spring evening.

Maybe we'll have some tasty treat as prepared by Adelina, followed by some light dessert Ingrid and I picked up at the pasticceria, and all accompanied by a couple of bottles of fine Sicilian wine. And, of course, a whisky for Ingrid and me to top off the evening.

On an unrelated matter, and before I forget, remember the scene where Salvo smashes the beachside villa's windows in "Gita a Tindari"? I don't remember the house as being on the beach in the novel's corresponsing scene.

Salvo seems so often to wind up with a drink when people show up at his house at odd hours or he winds up at someone's else's house at such hours, so I'll take the dessert and wind up increasing my stock of both parolacce and their Swedish equivalents.

“I don't remember the house as being on the beach in the novel's corresponding scene.” It wasn’t; it was in an inland rural area where Salvo could smash away unobserved (although I guess because it takes place in Sicily, witnesses are few and far between even in highly populated areas, at least according to Camilleri). Unfortunately, the smashing of the Seven Dwarfs garden gnomes and the painting of expletives did not appear in the TV episode. And wasn’t it just a tad unbelievable that a Saracen olive tree would be growing practically on the beach? I realize the producers have certain constraints to deal with but, really…

That's how i recalled it. So many houses in the books are in out-of-the-way locations -- illegal development and all.

I did find such a tree on a beach odd, as I did the relatively populated location. I guess the producers wanted to avoid what they thought of as the dead screen time it would take to get Salvo out to the location. A favored, remote meditation spot, which I think is what the tree was (as well as an allusion to Pirandello) may not be the easiest thing to accommodate for a screen production. It was a bit of a jolt to see the scene transferred to a beach, but I got over it quickly. The scene is still effective.

Question from friend now addicted to Montalbano episodes in Italian on RAI Web site, has seen all 18 episodes three times each; he wants to know if anyone knows if the Pepe Carvalho series is posted anywhere or if dvd's are available in Spanish.

MHz Networks in Virginia shows a number of international crime series and sells DVDs of at least some of them. I'm not sure if the Pepe Carvalho series is among them, but someone at the station might know. The guy in charge of programming the shows was named Mike Jeck.

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About Me

This blog is a proud winner of the 2009 Spinetingler Award for special services to the industry and its blogkeeper a proud former guest on Wisconsin Public Radio's Here on Earth. In civilian life I'm a copy editor in Philadelphia. When not reading crime fiction, I like to read history. When doing neither, I like to travel. When doing none of the above, I like listening to music or playing it, the latter rarely and badly.
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